Hello, it’s rant time!
(I hope you enjoy it!)
So, when I was in junior high, back in the Cretaceous Period, ;) I checked out a book from the library about a junior high girl who is a photographer and whose sister gets cancer and dies. It was a beautifully written book, and I enjoyed angst because I was, you know, a junior high girl. ;) So I read it over and over and over again. I checked it out from the library dozens of times.
One day, my mother noticed and asked what I was reading, and I started waxing enthusiastic about the book and what happens in it and I was just really happy to share, and she asked me, “Why do you like reading that? Do you want your sister to die?”
I didn’t respond well.
Now that I’m an adult, I understand that my mother primarily read for wish-fulfillment (historical romances, mostly), and that she furthermore believed that this was why everyone else read.
This is not why everyone else reads.
Many people read because they want to know what it would be like to be someone else. Someone of a different gender. Someone who lives in a different place. Someone with different skills. Someone whose life is completely different from theirs. Some of these people are happiest when a character is complicated.
People do this to authors, too, by the way. They assume that authors who write convincingly about rape or child abuse have been raped or abused themselves. This is not necessarily true. Mystery writers are not all homicidal maniacs. I know that will shock some of you. ;)
Stories are important. They teach us about life.
To make a long story short, if you think you can psychoanalyze a fan (or an author) based on their reading (or writing) preferences, you are wrong.
To drag this over to what prompted the rant, a fan telling another fan that they think Snape is a racist and therefore if they like Snape they are also a racist is approximately as valid as insisting that everyone who likes the Harry Potter series wishes both of their parents had been murdered.
</rant>